


blank passports and stolen hearts

by beckettemory



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 03:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10528419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckettemory/pseuds/beckettemory
Summary: "It doesn't bother you?"It was an honest question Eliot had posed, but Nate can't get it out of his head.





	

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for: mentions of sexual harassment, emotional manipulation, and (consensual) sexual situations

“It doesn’t bother you?” 

Nate furrowed his brow, but didn’t put down his book or look up from the page. “Hmm?” he asked. 

“Doesn’t bother you when Sophie flirts with the marks to get her way?” Eliot asked, leaning his elbows on the kitchen counter. 

Nate finally looked up and turned all the way around on the couch to squint at him. Eliot raised his eyebrows casually and popped a couple of blueberries in his mouth. 

“Why would it?” Nate asked. 

Eliot shrugged and picked a piece of onion skin from the counter, a remnant of his dinner prep earlier. He came around the counter, dropping the papery skin in the trash as he turned the corner. 

“Y’all’re together and all. Lotsa men, they’d be jealous,” Eliot said lightly, sliding onto the barstool on the other side of the counter and pulling the carton of berries back towards him. “And no ‘fense, but you seem like the kind of guy who would.” 

“No, no, it-it doesn’t bother me,” Nate said, trying to think through all the reasons he wasn’t jealous. “You know, she’s--she does it to get her way, to confuse them so they get the, the signals mixed up and they don’t pay as much attention to everything else. Then, we come in, and--”

“Yeah, we come in and crush ‘em,” Eliot finished for him. “I know the reasons. Grifting one-oh-one. But flirting ain’t the only way to do it. See,  _ you  _ do it by bein’ annoying, so they’re in a rush to get away from you. Hardison, he makes ‘em uncomfortable by bein’ direct an’ confrontational. Parker, she does it by bein’ weird, same effect. I do it a little different. I go for the background, lurker roles. Intimidation.” Eliot chewed a berry completely before continuing. “All with the same effects. The marks get distracted an’ sloppy so we can go in under their nose.” 

Nate frowned at him. He had a point. He’d never really questioned Sophie’s methods. Even when he was chasing her as an insurance cop instead of chasing her romantically she used flirting and low-cut dresses as a distraction from her thefts and cons, even against him a few times. And it was certainly true that the rest of them, they had their own grifting styles, some more seamlessly effective than others but all getting the job done. Flirting was certainly effective. 

It shouldn’t make him jealous. Sophie may flutter her eyelashes at a mark but at the end of the day it was Nate she came home to. The flirting wasn’t  _ real,  _ after all. 

It shouldn’t make him jealous.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Nate said again when he realized he’d never responded to Eliot. 

Eliot laughed. “You’re an enlightened man, Ford,” he said with a smirk, and let it go. 

Nate turned back to his book, but he couldn’t focus on it like he could before. 

He wasn’t jealous. Inflating big egos even further was practically Sophie’s entire job. And most of the men Sophie wooed were morally undesirable, and usually physically and socially undesirable too. It’s not like he was in any danger of Sophie leaving him and the crew for a mark. 

So why did she flirt? Why not use the other methods from time to time? 

He was a little confused, sure. But not jealous.

 

* * *

 

_ “I’d be happy to meet with your Head of Research and Development if you felt it necessary,”  _ Sophie said to the president of the company they were taking down.  _ “Whatever it takes to win you over,” _ she said, her voice softening like smooth chocolate. 

She was in the lobby of the company’s skyscraper and Nate was in the building across the street a couple floors up, so visibility wasn’t great, but he could still see the soft gaze in Sophie’s eyes, the slightly cocky smile she wore. She was half a moment away from a wink by Nate’s estimates. 

The mark was a short, pudgy, balding man of sixty-eight. He was well-known among temps in Boston for his habit of treating younger employees to long lunches and letting his hands wander. Hence the mass exodus of young women from the company, some “let go” for financial reasons, others mysteriously given lateral promotions with better benefits at smaller businesses under the same ownership, others coming into a bit of money when lawsuits and news stories disappeared. 

_ “Yes, I--that would probably be a good idea,”  _ the mark said, sounding a little disoriented.  _ “I warn you, though, Lawrence is a tough sell.”  _

Sophie laughed and it sounded like bells. Her grifting laugh. Her flirting laugh.  _ “You’ll find that I’m rather persuasive.”  _

Nate felt a pang of something as he paced the width of the empty office. He stopped and went to the window again, squinting down past the glare of the lobby windows. Sophie was doing that eye contact thing, the one with a soft but direct stare until your knees went weak. And the mark was very close. This wouldn’t be a difficult resolution. 

It was almost too easy. It couldn’t be enjoyable, barely having to work to wrap someone around her little finger. Sophie liked a challenge, he knew. 

So why take the easy route?

 

* * *

 

Nate absentmindedly twisted a curl between his thumb and forefinger, his book resting in his lap and his other hand resting on the page to hold it open. He hadn’t read a word in almost an hour. 

When the door of his apartment opened and Sophie called out a greeting, he didn’t move. He barely even heard her until she dropped her heavy purse on the table and walked, heeled boots clicking across the wooden floors, to the fridge. After half a minute she plopped onto the couch next to him and leaned over to press a kiss to his cheek. She then put one foot up onto the coffee table and started undoing her boot laces. 

“Plotting, are we?” she asked casually, and Nate snapped out of his thoughts to see her smirking and watching him out of the corner of her eye. 

He closed his book and set it aside. “Hmm? No, just--just thinking.” 

“Oh?” Sophie asked, carefully leaving room for him to wriggle away from the unspoken question as she started working on her other boot. 

“Yeah, uh.” Nate gestured vaguely with one hand. “Eliot and I were talking the other day.” 

He paused, unable to organize his thoughts enough to keep going. Sophie set her boots aside and turned sideways on the couch, resting an elbow on the back cushion and settling her chin in her hand. Her face was open, inviting. A calculated move. 

He knew what she could do. He knew how she operated, the moves she put on marks to make them pliable. She was the best actress in the world, but he knew all of her moves and could tell when she used them on the crew, on him. 

Nearly constantly, he had realized over the last few days. Almost everything she did was calculated, a front. Those moments he didn’t recognize her moves, when she gave Parker advice or laughed at Hardison and Eliot’s bickering, when she took half a step back from the mirror in the morning to turn her head this way and that, making faces at herself in the mirror when she thought he wasn’t looking,  _ that _ was the real Sophie, or Catherine, or whatever her name  _ really _ was. No characters, no personas, no fronts. Just the woman he loved, bare and vulnerable. 

“You, uh,” Nate began, and had to stop and clear his throat before he kept going. “You know how we all have our own grifting styles?” 

Sophie’s brows furrowed a touch and she nodded. 

“I’ve been thinking--why do you always go for the flirting method? It seems like… like it would get boring, or gross… Why do it?” Nate asked. When Sophie looked a little offended he cut her off and kept going, looking away from her so he wouldn’t wither. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, at all, it’s definitely… effective, yeah, and it doesn’t--doesn’t bother me or anything.” 

He glanced back up at her and saw her trying to hide a knowing smile. 

“Jealous?” she asked after a moment. 

“No--no, of course not. I’m just… curious.” 

She nodded knowingly but didn’t push the issue. She lifted her chin out of her hand and smoothed her other hand down his arm, giving him goosebumps. A calculated move, he knew, one designed to soothe his insecurities, and he hated that it was working. 

“When I meet a mark, or when I begin planning my approach, I determine what sort of man he is,” she explained. “Married, unfaithful, serial dater, insecure, egotistical, gay, intellectual, spiritual, sincere… It all informs how I’ll play the game. If I meet him before figuring it out I start with a neutral approach until I know. I design my persona around what will knock him the most off-balance without being obvious.” She squeezed Nate’s wrist softly and he felt a rush of warmth in his chest. Another move. “It just happens that flirting works best for most of the marks we go after.” 

“So is it… fun? For you? Playing with their emotions even--even when they’re ugly and immoral? The attention doesn’t bother you?” 

Sophie smiled. “The attention is never unwelcome,” she said, “but that’s not why I do it.” She turned to face forward and leaned her head on Nate’s shoulder, her hand sneaking into his and lacing their fingers together. “See, humans have this need. They need safety and food and water and shelter, yes, but there’s a need--equally as important as these others--that people don’t often consciously think about. Humans need to feel loved, cherished, admired. We need to know that someone out there thinks highly of us. When I flirt, I’m catering to that need. It’s intoxicating. You may see their responses as pure lust and temptation, but I see that need for a human connection.” 

“So really, you’re providing a service,” Nate said, humor in his voice. His confusion and, okay, fine, his jealousy were calming rapidly. “While you steal their company secrets.” 

Sophie laughed and squeezed his hand. “That’s one way to think about it.” 

Nate was quiet for a moment and Sophie began stroking her fingertips softly up and down his arm. 

“I know you’re manipulating me,” he said accusatorily, but he wasn’t particularly upset. 

Sophie hummed warmly. “Is it working?” 

Nate rolled his eyes and pulled their twined hands up to press a soft kiss to the back of her hand. “It is.” 

Sophie sighed heavily. “I try not to. It’s just habit at this point.” 

Nate let her hand go and slung his arm around her shoulder. “I know.” 

Sophie was quiet for a minute. “So it doesn’t bother you when I flirt with the marks?” 

“No,” Nate said, realizing a moment too late that he had answered very quickly and a little too fervently. 

Sophie giggled. “Of course.” 

Nate let out an exasperated sigh. “I regret even bringing it up.” 

Sophie shrugged off his arm and stood, grabbing his hand and pulling him up too. “Come on, lover boy, take me to bed.” 

Nate grinned and bent to sweep an arm under Sophie’s knees and pull her up into his arms. She shrieked and laughed. 

“You brute!” she crowed, smacking his chest. “Put me down!” 

Nate laughed and complied, secretly happy he didn’t have to keep the shtick up. He could hold Sophie just fine on solid ground, but a spiral staircase was another story entirely. Instead, he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her in for a long kiss. 

When they pulled back Sophie had fire in her eyes. She bit her lip and turned on her heel, dragging Nate by the shirtsleeve towards the stairs. 

He followed, knowing this was all for him. She may flirt with their marks, but only he could see that fire. And he was so, so incredibly lucky to get this warmth without the burns. 


End file.
